– As always, your love and comments are appreciated. If you’re searching the pre-show notes for an explanation on why this is up on Wednesday afternoon instead of Tuesday morning, look for it on the next page. Actually, look for it on page 6 and work your way backwards.

– Go read about that movie I made with the gold guy in pink gloves from this show, now featured at FilmDrunk. Our world premiere has been announced for April 4, 2014, in New Orleans. You know, where other important things relevant to your interests are happening.

I was thinking about that Shield promo (thinking about it way too much, probably). I liked it a lot. I liked Ambrose’s “Listen bonehead,” and “take your haunted rocking chairs somewhere else,” stuff. But it got me wondering why a totally dismissive “Whatever, guy” promo is so *cool* coming from Ambrose; but we’ve all shit on Cena for the same kind of dismissiveness. The only difference was the smirk that would have accompanied Cena’s version.

I’m certainly not arguing against the Shield. It’s just something that occurred to me.

We believe Ambrose and like him because he’s speaking in character. As a mercenary swat guy, HE doesn’t believe in Wyatt’s spooky shit. When Cena says it, he’s declaring it as fact with a wink wink nudge nudge to the camera that disqualifies it from existing in a universe. Ambrose is sharing an opinion, Cena’s being above opinion.

(The “Cena” in this example is the one who said Alberto Del Rio rents his cars, I’m not talking about Cena in 100% totality)

For me, there’s two reasons (well 3 if “I’m not tired of Ambrose yet” is a valid reason)

1) Ambrose’s character so far has been one of false bravado. He talks a big game because he knows he has Reigns and Rollins to back him up. Him saying he’s not afraid of Bray Wyatt kinda sorta makes you believe that he actually is afraid of Bray.

2) To go along with that, a lot of it is the delivery like you hinted with the smirk. With Cena, a lot his “your gimmick is dumb” promos aren’t delivered with the same intensity as his “I’m tired of messing around and now I’m going to destroy you” promos. Cena doesn’t feel like he’s telling whoever that he’s not afraid of them. He sounds like he’s telling them that there’s no reason for him to take them seriously. The Shield obviously take the Wyatts seriously. They threatened the boss man to get the match.

I forgot one last thought. There’s also a sense of “unreliable narrator” with Ambrose because he’s kind of crazy. You can’t take anything that guy says as truth (just like you can’t with Wyatt) because he’s not all there.

Yeah, for me the Ambrose thing works versus Cena’s various similar promos because it’s done wholly in character, and because he doesn’t have the same indefatigable, bulletproof nature that Cena does. We’ve seen Ambrose get beat up on the reg, and this promo comes in the midst of the Shield’s internal jockeying for position. Ambrose is putting on those airs because he, in character believes them, but also because he needs to act cool and impervious because Reigns is standing right next beside him.

I was hoping someone would mention that article. It’s kind of surreal to see a three-page article on .com about… well, not a competitor, exactly, but about ANY outside promotion. Even a mention of Dragon Gate.

Joey Styles has a big role with the website, right? I learned about the article via his tweet.

That was actually the article that got me thinking about it. Like if firing Ohno and Punk leaving was all an elaborate Kevin Nash/Scott Hall-esque work. Especially with reports in the last month of Cabana and KENTA getting tryouts.

A couple of things – first, I’d really hoped to get up to Easton on Saturday for NPWD, but got hijacked into a ‘Frozen’ sing-along screening with my daughters. I was really unfamiliar with Chikara, but watching the show on YouTube was so amazing, especially every moment where suddenly there’s Brandon and I’m going “HEY! I KINDA KNOW THAT GUY FROM THE INTERNET!!”. My point is, thanks for introducing the other wrestling options to me, man. I don’t think I’d be still watching ANY wrestling if I weren’t a regular reader of this column.

Second: So the rumor is that the “worked shoot” promos from Gizzler and Miz are leading to a tag-team…WHAT DO WE CALL THEM?!? My vote is for “Mizzgig”.

@irishblade and stempke
It’s a comfort to know that if I make a joke in a future open thread about Brock Lesnar and Olaf the snowman having similarly-shaped heads, at least you guys will get the reference.

I’m hoping that Orton will lose most of his pre-Chamber matches, and then lose the Chamber match. Then he can blame Triple H, attack him, and *they* can have a match at Mania. Then Bryan can have something better to do at Mania than lose to Triple H.

Not bad at all. This would open up possibility of a Brock-Batista-Bryan triple threat WMXXX main event. Short of Brock-Bryan, I can’t think of anything realistic that would be better. But I would accept Brock-Batista and HBK-Bryan. But they blew that one, or at least HBK told them no.

The pessimist in me (hey, that’s WWE’s fault) says that if Bryan isn’t wrestling HHH @ WM XXX, he’s going to be in an even worse spot, either wrestling Kane or Sheamus. Of course, those two are definitely not the same, as Bryan can easily get a match of the year out of Sheamus (as seen @ Extreme Rules 2012), but with Kane… not so much.

The point is, it’s going to be way down the card and it could easily happen that the fans go apeshit for Bryan and then do fuck all for the actual main events. Or even boo it and ask for more Bryan or CM Punk or whatever.

Thanks for the column. Sorry you got caught in the crap out east. And what’s happening w/ Emma was exactly what I was worried about w/ her coming up to the main roster. I spent a large portion of my Monday night defending her to people who can’t be bothered to watch NXT.

I’ll be that guy: I don’t get Emma’s dancing. Now, jet-lagged Brandon’s dissertation on why you can’t simply drop NXT characters into RAW without Nuance and Context was a wonderful piece of prose. While I didn’t need that to understand that she was set up to fail on Monday (especially in front of a Bunghole, Nebraska, crowd), I nonetheless appreciated Brandon’s informative take.

But the dance, ahhhhhhhhhhhh… she’s kind of halfway between a Fred Sanford fake heart attack and walking like an Egyptian — and not the Bangles version, but Steve Martin’s from the original SNL. (And yes, I’m very, very old.)

I’m not denying Emma’s in-ring ability (not an NXT watcher but I skimmed her NXT title match with Paige, and it was good) or actual charm and charisma (the Smackdown appearance where she reveals a second “Emma-lution” sign after Summer Rae takes her first one is wonderful). But that dance? No.

And while I’m at it, I don’t get the Renee love (bordering on stalking) either. Granted, I’ve not heard her call a match, but there’s absolutely nothing special whatsoever about the way she stands and holds a microphone. My guess is Renee’s fans are seriously overreacting to the astonishing crappiness of Cole/Lawler/JBL. Understandable, but… ahhhhhhhhhhh no. That doesn’t make Renee good or interesting.

I’m not head-over-heals for Renee; but I think a lot of it is that she’s known to be a long-time fan. Kind of like why so many of us like AJ– neither of them are in WWE just to get famous. They’re there because they love the business.

First, you should watch NXT, because it is free on the Internet and is the best show WWE produces.

Second, I am obviously not stalking Renee by complimenting her. I tried to meet her a couple of times, but that was just normal “I’m a fan of yours” stuff and like almost a year ago. You can watch any of Renee’s stuff from The Score online to see that she’s a charismatic, enjoyable television host, and the fact that she interacts with and seems to listen to the wrestlers without being a Backstage Josh Mathews Robot goes a long way. On color she started great and has been getting bad as of late, assumedly in prep to join Raw.

RAW was broadcast live i Australia for the first time, that’s probably why they debuted an Australian on this show. (And I still think that as long as they just repeat the mixed gender tag-team match between Santino Marella/Emma and Fandango/Summer Rae from NXT all will be good.)

Last week I made top ten with a lazy and terrible Brock Lesnar pun, this week I make it by comparing Emma’s RAW debut the competing world views in Voltaire’s Candide. I’m almost afraid to comment next week because I don’t know how to keep building on that.

Batista vs. Del Rio is so forced and goddamn boring. It’s announced that Batista is coming back. Del Rio gets mad. Batista shows up and kicks his ass. Batista eliminates him from the Rumble. That’s 2-0. Why the Hell is this still a thing?

Also having Jerry Lawler on commentary is worse than having Eric Bischoff giving away the show’s results on Nitro.

My comment was based on the assumption that ADR is NOT going to bolt as soon as he gets the chance. Which he probably should because he’s good in the ring and he deserves better than a forced feud with Batista.

What Cole says: “Del Rio’s really taking it to Batista! Look at the pain on The Animal’s face!”

Brandon might lost some credibility with me when he said, “I didn’t know I needed a team of mercenaries battling a cult of pagan hillbillies in some sort of The Raid-style Elimination Chamber scenario,” because honestly, how in the world could you NOT know that? It seems sorta obvious.

“I want Wyatt to bring a hundred cult followers with him to the Superdome only for The Shield to tear through the roof in a helicopter and fight them all. Tell me that wouldn’t be the best WrestleMania in f*cking history.”

A hundred extras dressed in Wyatt jumpsuits lining the ramp as Bray enters… that has to happen, right? Shield fighting their way through them Streets of Rage style would be great too, but the first part at least should be well within the WWE’s means.

And all of the cultist swaying along to Bray’s theme like the NXT crowd used too… but damn, Shield kicking ass through all of them until reaching the ring would be the most badass thing in the world. Have Reign’s spear like 5 people at once.

I still remember the time sting got many fakes to wear a mask with his paint on and tricked the NWO as one of the coolest things in wrestling’s history, and wyatt doing it again and on mania would be THE coolest thing in wrestling’s history (unless shield coming down with the helicopter through the roof and then fighting all of them off on the way to the ring can happen, cause THAT’d be THEEEEEE coolest.)

I had such high hopes for the “Brock is the self-proclaimed number one contender,” thinking we’d be spared the predictable and less-than-thrilling Taker-Brock WMXXX match, and maybe it would result in Taker-Cena and Brock-Batista (maybe even Brock-Batista-Bryan) WMXXX main event. But that storyline seems dead. Brock is not even booked in the EC, not even on the card, and it seems like they’ll just drop it altogether because he MDK’d the Rhodes Brothers when he didn’t get his match last week? Weird.

I’m from Minnesota, and I’m seriously bummed/mystified that Brock isn’t part of the EC PPV. Maybe they don’t want him getting the pop that he’d get here, but if there’s one way to distract us from no CM Punk, it be with Brock Lesnar…

infact, heyman and lesnar just came out, attacked the rhodes and said that it’s because the authority didn’t agree to their “suggestions”, without us getting shown any backstage segment where they did so! (or did I just watch a version where they deleted lesnar holding maddox in the air and breaking him in two halves mortal kombat style with the blood and the gut falls out from his body and everything?)

They still have two weeks to add a Lesnar match. I kinda feel like they probably will but, if not, I’d guess he makes an unannounced appearance – like…he’ll probably show up after the Chamber match and F-5 the shit out of the winner.

I’d like to see them start playing with audience expectations when they call NXT people up — like, have Emma show up, start doing her dance, but then just have her grab AJ and piledrive her or something.

I dunno — I’m starting to get that annoying comic book crossover feeling. I’m reading Batman (Raw and Smackdown) but all the important plot points and character development’s happening over in Detective Comics (NXT). I try to grab Detective Comics when I can, but f–k it, just give me a self-contained story in the pages of Batman.

I feel like NXT either needs to be a) fully integrated into the WWE universe, or b) further distanced from it. This “It’s easily accesible and most of the stuff that happens on it seems to ‘count’, but usually we pretend it doesn’t exist” set-up ain’t working.

I’m not versed in comic books, but this seems like a great metaphor, and I’m hoping there’s more attention towards NXT once they get the Network going, since they’ll be presumably tying it closer and pushing it more.

That is a great analogy. I follow wrestling, but only the stuff about it I really care about. NXT may be a great show, but skimming through RAW for the performers I want to see (and commenting on Brandon’s RAW recaps) is as much effort as I’m interested in making. Not down on anyone who enjoys NXT, that’s just how I am with my fandom.

If they had just put Emma in a match (preferably with Summer Rae), had her win and then break into the goofy dance it would have been a simple and reasonably coherent storytelling. Now she’s just a goofy dancer who maybe wrestles, rather than the other way around like it should be…

There are rumors that Del Rio wants to quit WWE when his contract’s up, due to CM Punk-like frustrations. While I’ll be sad to see him go, I understand he does little for many people. Hopeful suggestion before he leaves: 2-out-of-3 falls No DQ match with Ziggler at whatever PPV is his last. If Ziggler ever is going to be a thing and for Del Rio to go on a high note, one badass match with each of their best opponent, ending the story that started at the Post-WMXXIX RAW.

I think the problem with ADR for me (right from the beginning) is that his “hyper-rich douchebag” character didn’t seem to work to my eyes. I mean, the sort of promos that The Million Dollar Man used to cut stomped all over anything Del Rio did. Hell, I still remember the one spot where DiBiase got a little kid from the crowd, promised to pay him lots of money if he could dribble a basketball 10 times and then, when the kid was at 8 or 9 he just kicked the ball away on the poor kid. Talk about building crowd heat. Del Rio never managed that, not at least that I saw.
Also, a Mexican who’s a millionaire and NOT a cartel kingpin is a real thing, I know. But, honestly, when people think dickish millionaires they don’t think of Mexico. I know WWE built Del Rio up primarily for their hispanic fanbase but…I don’t know…if his character was from Spain…maybe. Or just bill him as this Mexican-born guy who’s so rich he lives on his own island or something. I don’t know, but millionaire-from-Mexico made basically zero sense to me.

I remember how much I hated the Million Dollar Man after he did that. One of my favorite promos ever. If my memory serves me after the basketball one he had a string of promos where he would challenge people in the crowd to to simple things and he’d always screw them over at the last second. Now that’s how you do “hyper-rich douchebag”

ADR was always at his best when they played up his overkilling, violent tendencies. WWE should have just called a mulligan on Del-Rio and made him a guy who’s richness bought him the ability to train with the best fighters on the planet. A made man whose family is so well off that the only thing that entertained him was beating up these poor guys who worked for their spots, gleefully stomping the hell out of them and easily winning titles.

My immediate thought when the Miz went down to the commentators’ desk to complain about not getting enough attention was that it was a weird, passive-aggressive dig by WWE brass/Creative at CM Punk and his reported frustrations, but because it’s them, it came off as weird and disconnected and doofy. I’m also not married to this interpretation; it’s just the first thing that came to mind.

So…Cesaro getting a spot in the Elimination Chamber makes perfect sense from a skill / talent (and maybe even a creeping popularity) point-of-view. But it feels like it came out of left field from a storyline perspectine. I’m not complaining, because I hope he SWISS DEATH’S every last person in there with him. Yes, even Bryan.
So…Christian getting a spot in the Elimination Chamber makes zero sense from a skill / talent point-of-view. It doesn’t even make sense from a storyline perspective. But maybe they’ve included Christian because the EC PPV will mark a return to the Attitude Era when Cesaro SWISS DEATH’s Christian and he literally explodes so that there bits of entrails and whatnot hanging from the metal bars of the Chamber.

Another exciting thing: Cesaro’s inclusion in the Chamber means he’ll probably have matches with the participants over the course of the next several Raw/Smackdowns. We know he’s got a match with Orton coming, and as someone mentioned above, a match with Bryan was taped for Smackdown.

PLUS, he’s got that 2-out-of-3 falls match coming up on the live NXT. He’s still a long way from being a ‘top guy,’ but I have hope that they realize what a great talent he is.

1. a part that you probably missed in the version you watched is their “mark henry’s coming back next week!” photo, unless you didn’t best it because you were saving it for the 5 point preview next week.

2. the announcers were always unbearable, but I just can NOT watch with the sound on anymore. I give up.

3. the shield are the best. ever.

4. ryback has become so awesome lately.

5. your explanation about emma is just the best. great job.

6. your scenario for shield vs wyatts at mania, and the other scenario for ROH’s guys coming back and helping balance stuff for bryan to have a fair fight = fangasm, and would make mania 30 really the best mania ever, which it probably “should and can but won’t” be.

Man, WWE Creative has effectively ruined Mark Henry, though. I mean, everyone here still loves the guy but they wasted his amazing retirement-swerve by having him lose cleanly to Cena. They should have at least put the belt on Henry for a little while so that Cena would have had some viable odds to overcome. Then they turned Henry into a total wimp by having Bork bork the ever-loving shit out of him super-squash styles. And, to rub it in, they had Big Show come down and suddebly Lesnar’s afraid of him?! Ugh.

in my dreams, henry won at money in the bank and kept the title until he faced bryan in a baller main event at summerslam before bryan won it and kept it even through a baller main event between him and cena at survivor series where they do the same stuff that happened since summerslam (bryan beating cena clean, orton cashing in, etc) only after months of satisfying all the fans with great stuff for both bryan and henry.

The best thing they could do is play this into a Naomi vs Aksana feud and actually try and build the Divas division like a normal wrestling division. Of course they’ll do the opposite have it play out on Total Divas.

The last paragraph of the Emma section needs to be mailed to wwe…. Emailed to wwe…. Tweeted to wwe… Posted on their Facebook… Flown to them by messenger pigeon…. Anything…. I pray the nxt divas won’t be spoiled on the main roster buts it’s obviously gonna happen and it’s terrifying

I’m not convinced that NXT Emma can’t work in Raw. I just think she had the worst booking imaginable for her debut: a dancing contest……
I thought with how they were setting her up, the outcome was obvious. Have Fandango vs. Santino in a throw away match and somewhere in the middle have Summer Rae get distracted by Emma and start yelling at her to go away. Santino comes in for the rescue because he’s a funny, good guy. This immediately turns into Emma/Santino vs. Summer/Fandango II and the match could have been the exact same match (move for move) as the original and work.
Or, have Summer tell Emma she doesn’t belong and needs to be put in her place. Have their match later in the show (probably replacing Aksana vs Naomi) and have Emma come out with her usual entrance: dancing, bubbles, and all. (The WWE buys a guy pantomiming that he’s firing a machine gun, they can get behind bubbles and awkward dancing) Then let Emma and Summer fight letting Emma use all her signature moves.
No matter the outcome, you have a legitimate feud that sets up the introduction of the new rising generation of female wrestlers out of NXT.
Or, you could just do this Shit and continue making Hokey Pokey jokes……FFFFUUUUUUCCCCKKKKKK!!! That’s probably what they’re going to do…..

I’ve always thought they should have done a thing where Summer twists her ankle and Fandango needs a new dance partner and ends up with Emma, then they do a Pygmalion thing between Fandango and Emma, but the random dance contest followed up by a blowing bubbles contest will set up everything the Raw viewers need to know about Emma.

This won’t happen because they never remember their own history, but you could still have it where Kane and Bryan are still pals and this is all a long con.
I mean, Bryan pretended to join the Wyatt Family just so he could get Bray alone in a cage.
Why couldn’t they have Bryan and Kane pretend they hate each other then whenever Bryan actually wins the title, (Either Elimination Chamber, Mania or Extreme Rules) Have The Authority around the ring, have it where HHH is about to interfere and suddenly Kane stops him and then Bryan wins the title.
That wouldn’t be a great moment? Kane handing Bryan the title and they hug it out in the middle of the ring as Bryan finally triumphs over The Authority?

Brandon, considering how bad Raw was, you really didn’t have to do a B&W this week.

Your fantasy Shield/Wyatt family storyline is pretty much what I’ve been saying for a while. Give the Shield one more guy and the Wyatt family a few more and this feud can last for a few months and still be amazing. It seems like a waste of money to only have these guys fight just once.

That Miz “shoot” was pretty stupid. They should have backstage access Miz, Ziggler and Ryder team up to help get each other over. They had pretty awesome chemistry together.

Not sure how long this is true, but the latest NXT is up … on Hulu Plus. If this is some brilliant scheme to get people to buy The WWE Network, it’s gonna work. (Shaking) it ffffeeelss ssssooo ccccococold suddenly.

That was how I felt, Brandon, after watching the women’s match: That Aksana was politely explaining what would happen to Naomi the next time she decided to ass-grind her face.
“Your Ass, My Face? You HURT.”